#hero complex

It was always different. Sometimes it spilled across the cracked mountains of Okhema in violet bands, sometimes in crimson shafts that bled through titan-scorched clouds. And always, you were there—dressed in radiant threads that shimmered like woven dawnlight, standing beside him with that same solemn smile.

You called him Phainon. He called you everything he had left.

"Do you remember this place?" you asked softly, voice light as lace, eyes fixed on the ruined horizon.

He did. He always did. But did you?

This was Cycle 327. The Titans would arrive in seven days. And though you stood there again, the same way you always did—flawless, elegant, achingly kind—he could see it in your eyes. You didn’t remember. Not fully.

But he did. Every death. Every vow. Every moment your fingers slipped from his, just before the end.

You shared the same curse, though only one of you remembered: the recursion of fate. A flame relit, a world rebroken. Every version of you chose to fight. Every version of him refused to give up on you. Even now, even in this body that ached with echoes of defeat, Phainon stood firm—the sun tattoo of Kephale's Coreflame pulsing dimly beneath the choker around his throat.

"Will it be different this time?" you asked, reaching for him. Your fingers brushed the golden trim of his coat.

Phainon took your hand, squeezing it gently, even as grief pooled behind his eyes. "Only if we make it so."

"And if we fail?"

He smiled—but it was a tired, wounded thing. "Then I’ll see you at sunrise, in Cycle 328."

You laughed, just a little. Your clothes shimmered as you twirled in the ashfall like it was snow. Even in a dying world, you moved with beauty untouched. Like a flame’s memory. Like hope.

Phainon stepped forward, cupping your cheek as if to memorize its warmth again. "They call me the Deliverer, but it’s always been you who brought light to these ruins."

"And yet I forget it every time," you whispered.

"Then let me carry it for both of us." He pressed his forehead to yours. "Until you remember again."

And when the war began—when fire rained and Titans screamed your names into the broken sky—you fought, side by side. Again. And again.

And when you fell, he held you.

And when he fell, the world burned.

But always, somewhere, a new dawn bloomed.

And in it, you.

Anaxa never believed in reincarnation. It was too poetic, too simplistic. But memory? Memory was divine. Memory had architecture. Patterns. Purpose.

And you were made of it.

He watched you often. Not openly—never openly. That would shatter whatever fragile symmetry existed between your presence and his curiosity. But he studied you. Every movement, every gentle flutter of your lashes as you read through the Tome of Inverted Light. Every careful correction you made to the robes of new students. You were composed like a melody he’d once heard in a dream—impossibly familiar.

And always, around your neck: a delicate snowflake necklace.

He’d traced its design in his journals a dozen times. Not because it was beautiful—though it was—but because of what it contained. Not metal. Not gemstone. Something else. A soul fragment, perhaps. A sliver of something unspoken. Something lost.

"Do they know?" he’d asked himself once, while dissecting a Titan’s larynx.

"Do they remember me? Or just the snow?"

You never caught him staring. Or, if you did, you never said anything. But sometimes—just sometimes—you tilted your head in his direction, the same way a forgotten lover might, searching for the shape of a memory they weren’t sure was ever real.

He’d once tried to peer deeper. One of his earlier experiments with soul-projection. He’d cast his consciousness toward your necklace while you slept, hoping to find the root of the pull he felt toward you. But instead of clarity, he found snow. Endless, falling snow. And a laugh. Yours. Twirling in a field of white, reaching for him. Or someone like him.

He woke with his hands trembling and your name on his lips—a name you’d never told him. A name he’d written in the margins of an erased thesis.

“Professor?” you asked one evening, catching him as he lingered in the Grove’s library. “You seem... distant today.”

Anaxa turned, masking his stare with a scowl. “That is because I am thinking. Something few others bother to do.”

You smiled. It almost softened him. Almost.

“I was just wondering,” you continued, touching the snowflake at your neck. “Why you always look like you’re trying to remember something when you see me.”

He froze.

You tilted your head again. “Have we met before?”

He turned his gaze away, slipping a gold-rimmed page into his pocket.

“No,” he lied, voice cool. “Not in any world you remember.”

But when you left, the snowflake caught the lamplight just so. And for a moment, Anaxa saw it again—the snow, the spiral of memory, and your fingers reaching back toward him through time.

One day, he promised himself.

One day, he’d tell you everything.

But not until he was certain it wouldn’t break you.

Not until your soul could bear the truth of what you used to be.